It has been practiced to arrange a movable contact strip having an elasticity within a connecting portion of a female type connecting terminal and an inserted male type connecting terminal is clamped resiliently by the movable contact strip. Recently it has been required to provide electrical connectors having a small size and larger number of poles, and therefore connecting terminals arranged within the connectors should be small. For the female type connecting terminal, a contact point of a movable contact strip to be connected to a corresponding male type connecting terminal should be provided at a forward position as far as possible and an insertion force of the male type connecting terminal should be small.
In order to meet the above mentioned requirements there have been proposed the following known connecting terminals.
(1) As shown in FIG. 6, within a connecting portion 1, a movable contact strip 3 and a reinforcing strip 4 are bent upward from a bottom plate 2 and tips of these strips are overlapped with each other at a contact point 5.
(2) As illustrated in FIG. 7, a movable contact strip 3 whose root portion is connected to a top plate 6 is bent such that a free end 7 is face forward within a connecting portion 1.
(3) As depicted in FIG. 8, a root portion of the movable contact strip 3 bent into U-shape is connected to a top plate 6 and a free end 7 of the movable contact strip 3 facing forward is bent toward a bottom plate 2 such that a tip of the free end 7 is engaged with a guide strip 8 provided at a front end of the bottom plate 2.